


The Skin of A Lover

by withinmelove



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Reincarnation, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withinmelove/pseuds/withinmelove
Summary: The reincarnations of a woman and her selkie lover.





	The Skin of A Lover

**Author's Note:**

> The selkie man was directly based off a passionate crush I had.

She watches him for so long with such admiration for the sleek lines of his body. Time chews at her patience until she can stand it no longer. She coaxes him close with her quiet presence. She’s mesmerized when he lets her caress him. It’s not until he lays his head down on her thigh that her heart is stolen. 

She skins him with expertise, her fingers deft in separating his two lives. Births him into his human scream. How beautiful the heaving of his chest beneath the mantle of his fur, now a swaddling blanket. 

\--

In their first life, so overwhelming is the greed in her heart for his complete possession that it eats away all the softness of her gentle love. It’s years before he revolts against her but she has been awaiting this day since she first held him, bloodied, in her arms. The long, stretching history of his kin warns her that wistful gazes and restlessness will not always remain so. She watches as his gaze turns to ice, his body closed off from hers.

It’s morning time when he comes at her, teeth bared, a snarl in his throat. The dagger at home on her hip finds itself buried in his chest in a flash. A shocked moment as he stares down at the steel. Recognizes it as what stripped him of his rightful skin. She launches herself at him. Down they go in thrashing limbs and screams. His large hand around her throat cutting off her breath. Fingernails scrape his face – a sharp dig of her thumb in the soft underside of his jaw releases his grip. All he wants is freedom, but his desperation doesn’t match her ferocity to keep him. 

He’s no match, soon bound hand and foot. She makes his grasp for life a permanent punishment with the disfigurement of his beautiful body. Kills the last glimmer in his eyes when she cuts apart his silky fur. Slowly feeds the fire until the smell of burning hair and skin makes them ill. She has broken – ruined -- him.

He will never escape her. He will never be without her love.

\--

A second life where no knife finds warmth from her skin. Once he awakens into his new body, her heart overflows with love. She lets the assurance of new, dizzy romance soften her. This time her mind doesn’t shut like a trap on suspicion. No, she’s too enthralled with him to ponder the festering wound she’s delivered.

This time when he rises up against her, his powerful body covering her, her eyes are wide in terror. His teeth clamp down on her throat. She gasps, struggling underneath him. Easy enough for his knees to pin hers down, hands in her hair to keep her head still. Frantic fingers find his familiar knife pressed against the small of his back. She thrusts the knife deep into his side before his hand can find hers. Darkness is swallowing her vision – a rising wail as she convulses in the last desperate throes beneath him. Chokes and tears at his hands with her fingernails. He won’t let go until her face has taken on the emptiness of sleep. She gasps and is still.

He buries the knife in her throat.

\--

A third life steals the happiness from his heart, never even giving rage a foothold. 

He becomes the vision of his kind. 

No children to lighten his burden, so he turns to sleep and drink. She begs him to stop and in turn, he pushes her away. She will never give him his rightful skin. He doesn’t want her near.

One night when the thought of another day is too unbearable to contemplate, he creeps from their bed soon to return. He pulls her close and she curls up to him, unquestioning, affections-starved for too long to think _why_. He kisses the poison into her mouth knowing he will not survive the doses he too is swallowing. Her death will be the payment for his chained life. He will leave this world for a place she can never hold onto him. For years, her love was a comforting certainty. Now it chokes the life from him. He offers this sweetness so she’ll swallow the bitterness.

He once loved her.

\--

The fourth life. He gives her his pelt but somehow it’s not what she had hoped for. At first, she’s overjoyed by this symbolic presentation of love. It’s not until years down the road does the thought of ownership disturb her contentment. What she mistook as love was indeed only a sickness of the brain.

\--

It’s in this last, fifth, life that she realizes the heated obsession that overtook her. So willingly did she call this fever upon herself that it consumed her. There was nothing but scorching waves. She awakens in their bed just before dawn, the chill autumn air from the cracked window blowing across the cold sweat covering her body. 

She trembles with panic so violent her teeth chatter. The thought of reaching out to him is repulsive. Before he wakes, she’s sliding out of their bed.

In the living room, she pulls his favorite quilt from its place on the couch. The smell of him is strong a primal scent that is beyond description. Something that is intrinsically masculine. She strokes her mouth and chin with the edge of the quilt, comforted by the sensation. The pieces are made from her own clothes along with her family’s and her lover’s. Her heart is galloping as she fetches scissors and cuts apart the project she once so lovingly made in secret. Bit by bit, silky fur begins to peek out. It’s an hour yet before the soft waterfall of his pelt lies over her knees.

He only just begins moving about in the bedroom as she finishes the job. She’s lightheaded and feeling faint when he enters. 

It breaks her heart when he gapes at her, betrayal taking his legs out from underneath him. He crawls to her caresses his true skin. What he thought he’d never find again.

“Please. Let me go,” he begs. She knew one day he would ask to be free, but she was never ready for that eventuality. How she weeps to lose her lover to the wildness in himself. But she agrees to finally let him go; loves him too much to deny him. He kisses her tears in gratitude; holds her close but doesn’t promise to return. 

Truly, he loves her even with this ugly secret relieved: The fact she would have kept him enslaved at her side in the name of love. Somehow, it’s still gut-wrenching to leave her like this, tearful and wounded. 

Soon, all she will have left is the memory of him.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been rattling around for three years now. Today I finally told myself I'm finishing this tiny piece and putting it out here. I've always wanted to be but kept not uploading it.


End file.
